Warm wishes for a happy holiday season, and our best to you all in the New Year.

The Autism Blog

Critical Thoughts and Self-compassion

Insecurity often underlies critical thoughts and in our achievement-oriented world, it’s easy to feel as if we don’t measure up. If a core belief at the heart of critical thoughts is that we are “not good enough”, it could be that we’re using an unrealistic measure of our worth. If in our mind’s eye, we associate perfection with what we “should be” then we set ourselves up for disappointment. It’s fine to have goals and ambitions but we shouldn’t make self-acceptance dependent on them. Read full post »

If you are interested in taking your child to see a Sensitive Santa there are a couple of options this weekend.

12th Annual Special Santa December 5th Eastside Four Square Church

Each year, Santa’s Elves at Northwest Special Families make it possible for over 120 families to have a special visit and professional picture with Santa who has experience with children with Special Needs. It’s a magical day filled with supported crafts & activities for the entire family. Read full post »

We’d like to introduce you to the newest and perhaps busiest member of our Seattle Children’s Autism Center team. Meet Joey, intern extraordinaire.

This is a paper about a place that I love. There are multiple things that I love about this place but I will only talk about a few things. The topics that I will be talking about are how I got there, great staff, what I do and what I learned while working there.

The first topic is how I got there. This year I am in a transition program at Seattle Children’s Hospital. This program is for students who are in their last year in Seattle public schools. This program is all about learning job skills so that all of us can get a job after this year. Throughout the year all nine students who are in the program are doing three job rotations. I started out by working at Seattle Children’s in the cafeteria, wiping down tables and chairs. While I was doing that, my job coach was trying to figure out what my next rotation Read full post »

Welcome to the November edition of Ask Dr. Emily! We often receive questions that we want to share with all our readers. To help with this, Dr. Emily Rastall, a clinical psychologist at Seattle Children’s Autism Center, will share insights here, on the last Friday of each month, in a question and answer format. We welcome you to send us your questions and Dr. Rastall will do her best to answer them each month. Send your questions to theautismblog@seattlechildrens.org.

Q:My 6-year old son is potty trained at home and at the homes of friends/family but he refuses to use the toilet outside of these familiar situations and subsequently has accidents at school. I am at a loss as to what strategies to suggest since we don’t have these issues at home. Do you have any recommendations for children with challenges successfully using toilets outside of their comfort zone?Read full post »

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Seattle Children's complies with applicable federal and other civil rights laws and does not discriminate, exclude people or treat them differently based on race, color, religion (creed), sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin (ancestry), age, disability, or any other status protected by applicable federal, state or local law. Financial assistance for medically necessary services is based on family income and hospital resources and is provided to children under age 21 whose primary residence is in Washington, Alaska, Montana or Idaho.